An update to my comment yesterday: here’s Mamdani arguing against the bankruptcy sale of a building full of rent-stabilized and controlled apartments, on the basis of it being impossible to sustain such a business because those units make so little money while costs are so high. Gee where did that dynamic come from?
I literally cannot imagine a private developer confidently investing in new construction with a predatory administration eagerly looking to seize properties under whatever pretext available. (Likely in violation of the Constitution, but we’ll have to wait for the SC to get around to this topic before we find out for sure.)
Why don’t we give him a Nobel peace prize and put his names on buildings and roads. WTF, he has literally done nothing and no one should be warming to ideology. See what he does and then praise or condemn him.
It's people like Mamdani that would push me back to the GOP. His appointment of Cea Weaver to run his resurrected Office to Protect Tenants is scary. At various points in her career Weaver has:
- Called upon the government to seize private property (she thinks it's illegitimate)
- Said "private property including any kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy."
- Said "rent control...is a perfect solution to everything"
- Advocated to "elect more communists"
I don't see any moderation in Mamdani; if anything, his inaugural speech indicated he was only playing at moderating some of his positions during the campaign to ensure his election.
Democrats like him scare me...almost as much as Trump.
How do you know that? And if so, what's he doing wasting taxpayer money by creating a taxpayer-funded ceremonial-only position for an avowed Communist. Sounds like he's already headed down the path of socialist corruption.
All of that sounds like a dodge to the question: why is he wasting taxpayer money reviving (to use your word this time) an office you claim is merely ceremonial? And putting a Marxist in it to boot?
I'm hearing a lot of whataboutism and no justification for the appointment. I don't share your optimism he'll be a better steward of taxpayer dollars, but I'd be more worried about his brand of socialism infecting the Democratic party nationally.
Something you mentioned that I think is somewhat underdiscussed (and supported by this comment section) is that he really gets under the skin of right wingers and some moderates and, while many would prefer not to admit it, many leftists care less about winning as much as they care about their enemy of choice losing... Mamdani doesn't need to politically cater to the base if he can still serve up a healthy portion of right wing and centrist crash outs!
I remain deeply skeptical of Mamdani. We'll see how things go over the next 6 months to a year. If he can show that he can deliver pragmatic results then that's a good step for forward for me to come around from being deeply skeptical to cautiously approving. The only reason why I'm glad Mamdani won is so that Cuomo would lose (twice!). I wish there was someone like SF's Daniel Lurie who was in the NYC mayoral race but, alas.
I'd actually argue, outside of the vortex that is San Francisco housing politics (and LA to a lesser extent), the split between YIMBYs and lefties is far less than people claim, at least among people under 45.
But because YIMBYism started in San Francisco, that meant you got lots of toxicity by both NIMBY comedians and weirdo tech-adjancent YIMBY types at the start of things while in reality, in other places around the country, the YIMBY and progressive land were many times the same, while the moderate and NIMBY lane also were aligned.
One critique of Abundance (the book) that lands with me is that it's unwilling to pick a fight -- with unions, environmentalists, tenants rights groups etc. That unwillingness bought Ezra and Derek precisely zero with leftists, who are always itching for a fight with neoliberal shills.
All policy involves tradeoffs. The biggest problem with Biden was he was too concerned about mollifying every single interest group. As a result he couldn't do basic, politics 101 stuff like brag about how the US was producing more oil than ever for fear of angering climate activists.
So yeah, don't run away from a fight. Be willing to tell Sunrise Movement to stuff it.
I like “fast and free buses”. In my mind, the biggest virtue of making buses free is that it means they don’t have to dwell while everyone scans their card and the driver argues with someone who doesn’t want to pay. It’s hard to make buses as fast as they can be without making them free. (It’s easier with subways because you have gates for people to pay at before they get to the platform, so boarding can be fast.)
It depends entirely on how frequent the buses are for a route and the time spent on scanning passes/taking payments relative to that. If the bus runs every hour or 30 mins, 5 mins for payments is not a significant overhead. If it runs every 10 mins, then it is.
This is definitely the best argument for making buses free. I’m not totally convinced as there other problems with zero fare buses, but this is the one area where better and free cohabitate.
Man, that’s great news. In Seattle, on the other hand, rumor has it they’re gonna stop arresting people for public drug use, and I feel like we’re about to touch the hot stove again with our progressive prosecutor. And things had improved so much under the previous leadership!
Yay for more FAFO 🙄 How many times must we touch the hot stove?
I will say that this link is pretty awesome (from Seattle’s local version of the Onion). The one decent thing about the new mayor is she’s pretty YIMBY, but if we chase out all the major employers what’s the fucking point of YIMBY?
That who not arresting thing for public drug use is rage bait by the union. To quote the article you list above:
"Erika Evans, who was sworn in on Monday, sent a memorandum Jan. 1 to her criminal division that prosecutors, upon receiving a possession or public use case from police, should immediately refer the case to the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program."
Seattle politics would be a lot less vicious if so called "moderates" didn't pretend the sky is falling every time a progressives implement a policy.
Maybe so, but we should be moving the opposite direction, and any signaling of more lawlessness is bad news, even if it just is more blue flu it’s bad news. We should be arresting people for public hard drug use (or better yet, shipping them to Florida!)
I have been repeatedly assured that she's a smart policy wonk, but I'm really not seeing it. I thought we learned that if you stop arresting people for public drug use, they do it more and that means things like more dirty needles in the park. Honestly, if the new administration thinks stuff like this is fine and just a part of urban life, they need to make that clear.
Maybe it was a communications mixup but that's an indicator that the current administration isn't exactly up to the job. I'm really going to be interested in how she decides to add the 4,000 beds of shelter. Last time I heard someone ask her about it she didn't have a plan and seemed to think that the questions were unfair and the fault of Bruce Harrell. My guess is that she truly does not understand how difficult stuff like that is and assumed it wasn't getting done because rich people opposed it.
I’m pretty gung ho on urbanism and want a light rail line in every pot, but order is simply a prerequisite to urbanism.
I’m not very happy about how keen her and Ferguson are about raising new taxes on millionaires either. Even though I’m not one, and support confiscatory wealth taxes at the federal level, I would rather have them not leave the local tax base. Local socialism is civic malpractice!
I am concerned that Mamdami is actively supporting the far left opposition candidate to Congressman Dan Goldman on the basis of Goldman’s historic support for Israel. Losing Goldman in the Congress would be a terrible loss for the country. Mamdami should be focusing on being the NY mayor and not injecting himself into congressional politics.
With mayoral control of the schools, this stood out to me : "[the teacher's union's] dream is for everything to be handled in low-profile down-ballot elections that they can dominate."
In Chicago, when the school board shifted from mayoral appointees to elected members, there was a lot of concern about this. However, the Chicago Teacher's Union is so unpopular despite spending $2.1MM in support of their candidates, only 4 of their 10 candidates won a seat on the first elected board and one of those ran unopposed. That's a solid faction, but hardly domination. The CTU recently promoted a protest against the Venezuela action, so I think they've learned nothing from that loss.
I'm curious how NYC would play out. I don't think it's a given the teacher's union would dominate - there's some deep pockets in NYC that would support other candidates. That said, I think these school board races are a waste of money and huge distraction
If any other newly elected politician was showing signs of being an effective manager but had doubled down on racism and religious bigotry at the same time--as mamdani has done repeatedly regarding jewish people and israelis--by targeting literally any other ethnic or religious group in the world, i suspect there would be far less enthusiasm to excuse it. imagine if he said "i'm not racist against ___, look at all my ___ friends! i just dont think they have the right to nationhood or self determination." truly an odious human being, and no different from when trumpists play footsie with extremists.
Also his anecdote to Politico that his Israeli teacher sniffed out his excused absence fraud at school because he was “IDF, and so he had experience tracking brown people” (as if Israelis aren’t majority brown themselves)
So, you were completely and utterly wrong, and covered yourself in disgrace by endorsing an arch-NIMBY over a progressive YIMBY?
I wish this piece had engaged in a bit more soul-searching about how, exactly, Matt got this election so completely wrong. The answer is that Matt has allowed Twitter to rot his brain to the point that he is more invested in winning Internet Points than in pursuing political outcomes. But that would require some awareness, and might necessitate a change of behavior, so I doubt we'll see it.
Back in May, in the run-up to the primary. He said his first choice was Adams but that he thought Cuomo was preferable to Mamdani. It was not a ringing endorsement, but it *was* an endorsement.
It was a calamitous decision, a clear sign that Matt's mind was gone, and it was essentially the end with Matt for me.
This guy used to be about ideas and 'how to win'. Now his brains been hollowed out by his racist buddies on the Nazi App, he's turned his back on his old ideas, and he's just another vector for useless accomodationism.
In any case, I don't know why you're surprised that he wouldn't endorse a socialist. What greater sign of a fried brain than someone who embraces an old, failed ideology like socialism?
Continuing to give a permission structure for hating Jews is still a hard no from me, regardless of competence.
I haven't read past "I am part of the “warming to Mamdani” trend", but really? Five days into his term?
An update to my comment yesterday: here’s Mamdani arguing against the bankruptcy sale of a building full of rent-stabilized and controlled apartments, on the basis of it being impossible to sustain such a business because those units make so little money while costs are so high. Gee where did that dynamic come from?
I literally cannot imagine a private developer confidently investing in new construction with a predatory administration eagerly looking to seize properties under whatever pretext available. (Likely in violation of the Constitution, but we’ll have to wait for the SC to get around to this topic before we find out for sure.)
https://cases.stretto.com/public/x447/13780/PLEADINGS/1378001052680000000158.pdf
Cc @Ben
Why don’t we give him a Nobel peace prize and put his names on buildings and roads. WTF, he has literally done nothing and no one should be warming to ideology. See what he does and then praise or condemn him.
Stupid talking heads….
It's people like Mamdani that would push me back to the GOP. His appointment of Cea Weaver to run his resurrected Office to Protect Tenants is scary. At various points in her career Weaver has:
- Called upon the government to seize private property (she thinks it's illegitimate)
- Said "private property including any kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy."
- Said "rent control...is a perfect solution to everything"
- Advocated to "elect more communists"
I don't see any moderation in Mamdani; if anything, his inaugural speech indicated he was only playing at moderating some of his positions during the campaign to ensure his election.
Democrats like him scare me...almost as much as Trump.
How do you know that? And if so, what's he doing wasting taxpayer money by creating a taxpayer-funded ceremonial-only position for an avowed Communist. Sounds like he's already headed down the path of socialist corruption.
All of that sounds like a dodge to the question: why is he wasting taxpayer money reviving (to use your word this time) an office you claim is merely ceremonial? And putting a Marxist in it to boot?
I'm hearing a lot of whataboutism and no justification for the appointment. I don't share your optimism he'll be a better steward of taxpayer dollars, but I'd be more worried about his brand of socialism infecting the Democratic party nationally.
Something you mentioned that I think is somewhat underdiscussed (and supported by this comment section) is that he really gets under the skin of right wingers and some moderates and, while many would prefer not to admit it, many leftists care less about winning as much as they care about their enemy of choice losing... Mamdani doesn't need to politically cater to the base if he can still serve up a healthy portion of right wing and centrist crash outs!
I remain deeply skeptical of Mamdani. We'll see how things go over the next 6 months to a year. If he can show that he can deliver pragmatic results then that's a good step for forward for me to come around from being deeply skeptical to cautiously approving. The only reason why I'm glad Mamdani won is so that Cuomo would lose (twice!). I wish there was someone like SF's Daniel Lurie who was in the NYC mayoral race but, alas.
I'd actually argue, outside of the vortex that is San Francisco housing politics (and LA to a lesser extent), the split between YIMBYs and lefties is far less than people claim, at least among people under 45.
But because YIMBYism started in San Francisco, that meant you got lots of toxicity by both NIMBY comedians and weirdo tech-adjancent YIMBY types at the start of things while in reality, in other places around the country, the YIMBY and progressive land were many times the same, while the moderate and NIMBY lane also were aligned.
I'll repeat what I mentioned on another substack. Watching Mamdani reminds me of Gavin de Becker's warning that charm is a verb, not a trait.
This was great, thanks for writing it.
One critique of Abundance (the book) that lands with me is that it's unwilling to pick a fight -- with unions, environmentalists, tenants rights groups etc. That unwillingness bought Ezra and Derek precisely zero with leftists, who are always itching for a fight with neoliberal shills.
So your complaint is that they're unwilling to pick a fight with people who think they should be picking fights?
All policy involves tradeoffs. The biggest problem with Biden was he was too concerned about mollifying every single interest group. As a result he couldn't do basic, politics 101 stuff like brag about how the US was producing more oil than ever for fear of angering climate activists.
So yeah, don't run away from a fight. Be willing to tell Sunrise Movement to stuff it.
I like “fast and free buses”. In my mind, the biggest virtue of making buses free is that it means they don’t have to dwell while everyone scans their card and the driver argues with someone who doesn’t want to pay. It’s hard to make buses as fast as they can be without making them free. (It’s easier with subways because you have gates for people to pay at before they get to the platform, so boarding can be fast.)
It depends entirely on how frequent the buses are for a route and the time spent on scanning passes/taking payments relative to that. If the bus runs every hour or 30 mins, 5 mins for payments is not a significant overhead. If it runs every 10 mins, then it is.
Are there empirical measurements of how much time is lost paying on buses with modern payment systems (i.e. the paywave style ones)?
I used to take the bus every day for years and I never felt like payment was a big time user but my own perception doesn't mean much.
This is definitely the best argument for making buses free. I’m not totally convinced as there other problems with zero fare buses, but this is the one area where better and free cohabitate.
Man, that’s great news. In Seattle, on the other hand, rumor has it they’re gonna stop arresting people for public drug use, and I feel like we’re about to touch the hot stove again with our progressive prosecutor. And things had improved so much under the previous leadership!
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattle-leaders-spar-with-police-union-over-new-directive-on-drug-use-crimes/
Yay for more FAFO 🙄 How many times must we touch the hot stove?
I will say that this link is pretty awesome (from Seattle’s local version of the Onion). The one decent thing about the new mayor is she’s pretty YIMBY, but if we chase out all the major employers what’s the fucking point of YIMBY?
https://theneedling.com/2026/01/02/furious-mayor-wilson-pounds-fist-on-table-demanding-chalice-of-nimby-blood/
That who not arresting thing for public drug use is rage bait by the union. To quote the article you list above:
"Erika Evans, who was sworn in on Monday, sent a memorandum Jan. 1 to her criminal division that prosecutors, upon receiving a possession or public use case from police, should immediately refer the case to the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program."
Seattle politics would be a lot less vicious if so called "moderates" didn't pretend the sky is falling every time a progressives implement a policy.
Maybe so, but we should be moving the opposite direction, and any signaling of more lawlessness is bad news, even if it just is more blue flu it’s bad news. We should be arresting people for public hard drug use (or better yet, shipping them to Florida!)
Glad I'm not the only one that's considered it as a solution to our homelessness problem out here.
I have been repeatedly assured that she's a smart policy wonk, but I'm really not seeing it. I thought we learned that if you stop arresting people for public drug use, they do it more and that means things like more dirty needles in the park. Honestly, if the new administration thinks stuff like this is fine and just a part of urban life, they need to make that clear.
Maybe it was a communications mixup but that's an indicator that the current administration isn't exactly up to the job. I'm really going to be interested in how she decides to add the 4,000 beds of shelter. Last time I heard someone ask her about it she didn't have a plan and seemed to think that the questions were unfair and the fault of Bruce Harrell. My guess is that she truly does not understand how difficult stuff like that is and assumed it wasn't getting done because rich people opposed it.
Erika Evans may be the bigger problem, too.
I’m pretty gung ho on urbanism and want a light rail line in every pot, but order is simply a prerequisite to urbanism.
I’m not very happy about how keen her and Ferguson are about raising new taxes on millionaires either. Even though I’m not one, and support confiscatory wealth taxes at the federal level, I would rather have them not leave the local tax base. Local socialism is civic malpractice!
I am concerned that Mamdami is actively supporting the far left opposition candidate to Congressman Dan Goldman on the basis of Goldman’s historic support for Israel. Losing Goldman in the Congress would be a terrible loss for the country. Mamdami should be focusing on being the NY mayor and not injecting himself into congressional politics.
With mayoral control of the schools, this stood out to me : "[the teacher's union's] dream is for everything to be handled in low-profile down-ballot elections that they can dominate."
In Chicago, when the school board shifted from mayoral appointees to elected members, there was a lot of concern about this. However, the Chicago Teacher's Union is so unpopular despite spending $2.1MM in support of their candidates, only 4 of their 10 candidates won a seat on the first elected board and one of those ran unopposed. That's a solid faction, but hardly domination. The CTU recently promoted a protest against the Venezuela action, so I think they've learned nothing from that loss.
I'm curious how NYC would play out. I don't think it's a given the teacher's union would dominate - there's some deep pockets in NYC that would support other candidates. That said, I think these school board races are a waste of money and huge distraction
If any other newly elected politician was showing signs of being an effective manager but had doubled down on racism and religious bigotry at the same time--as mamdani has done repeatedly regarding jewish people and israelis--by targeting literally any other ethnic or religious group in the world, i suspect there would be far less enthusiasm to excuse it. imagine if he said "i'm not racist against ___, look at all my ___ friends! i just dont think they have the right to nationhood or self determination." truly an odious human being, and no different from when trumpists play footsie with extremists.
Those are heavy charges, care to highlight some specific instances of him doubling down on racism and bigotry?
Park East Synagogue. See my comment above.
Also his anecdote to Politico that his Israeli teacher sniffed out his excused absence fraud at school because he was “IDF, and so he had experience tracking brown people” (as if Israelis aren’t majority brown themselves)
So, you were completely and utterly wrong, and covered yourself in disgrace by endorsing an arch-NIMBY over a progressive YIMBY?
I wish this piece had engaged in a bit more soul-searching about how, exactly, Matt got this election so completely wrong. The answer is that Matt has allowed Twitter to rot his brain to the point that he is more invested in winning Internet Points than in pursuing political outcomes. But that would require some awareness, and might necessitate a change of behavior, so I doubt we'll see it.
Probably should wait until Mamdani actually does something that substantively increases housing supply before taking a victory lap
Know what? I'm comfortable with it. I already know what Cuomo would have done, as does everyone else with half a brain.
When did Matt endorse Cuomo?
Back in May, in the run-up to the primary. He said his first choice was Adams but that he thought Cuomo was preferable to Mamdani. It was not a ringing endorsement, but it *was* an endorsement.
It was a calamitous decision, a clear sign that Matt's mind was gone, and it was essentially the end with Matt for me.
This guy used to be about ideas and 'how to win'. Now his brains been hollowed out by his racist buddies on the Nazi App, he's turned his back on his old ideas, and he's just another vector for useless accomodationism.
That's literally not an endorsement.
In any case, I don't know why you're surprised that he wouldn't endorse a socialist. What greater sign of a fried brain than someone who embraces an old, failed ideology like socialism?
As funny as it is to watch Matt fans turn into batter-brained Bernie Bros on this, it was an endorsement.